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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26381437">Nach Selbstbeherrschung strebe ich nicht</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness'>Elsinore_and_Inverness</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Discworld - Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anxiety, Book: Making Money, Drumknott is Lawful Neutral but also a Marxist, Eating Disorder, Fiat Money, Gen, the gold standard, these two think way too much</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:40:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,434</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26381437</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The coach was parked on the street outside the Post Office</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rufus Drumknott &amp; Havelock Vetinari</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Nach Selbstbeherrschung strebe ich nicht</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title is from Franz Kafka's Zürau Aphorisms</p><p>Nach Selbstbeherrschung strebe ich nicht. Selbstbeherrschung heißt: an einer zufälligen Stelle der unendlichen Ausstrahlungen meiner geistigen Existenz wirken wollen. Muß ich aber solche Kreise um mich ziehen, dann tue ich es besser untätig im bloßen Anstaunen des ungeheuerlichen Komplexes und nehme nur die Stärkung, die e contrario dieser Anblick gibt, mit nach Hause.</p><p>I do not strive after self-control. Self-control means: my mind's existence is inclined to operate at a random point in infinite radiations. Since I have to pull such circles around myself, then I had better do it passively, barely, amazed at the egregious complex, and take home only the fortification, the e contrario the sight gives  me. (Translation mine)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div>
  <p>The coach was parked on the street outside the Post Office and Drumknott was getting Vetinari to Explain the Plan.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><p>“So who benefits from this break away from the gold standard?”</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div><p>“Those with something to sell. People in debt. Farmers. Shareholders.”<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div><p>“And who doesn’t?”</p></div><div><p>“The financial establishment. Banks. Landlords. People who keep money in the mattress. At least initially.”</p></div><div><p>“‘Those with something to sell’ means the ones owning the means of production. They’ll do anything for more profits without increasing costs. If this means they’ll get away with—“</p></div><div><p>The Patrician steepled his fingers. “Mr Drumknott, what is a Guild?”</p></div><div><p>“A Guild is an association formed to protect the interests of its members, an organization of self-employed craftspeople with ownership and control over... Oh.”</p></div><div><p>The Patrician cheekily put up a victory/peace sign with his hand. </p></div><div><p>Drumknott looked serious. “It doesn’t protect everyone. There are people being exploited and this move is going to hurt some of them.”</p></div><div><p>“The gold standard is an eroding lie. We are legitimizing and therefore regulating the reality. Money is something that happened organically. Seeds and shells and stones weren’t introduced as units of value from the top down. When value comes from government fiat we’re able to maintain control. Otherwise we don’t don’t so much have an echo-gnomie as an argument.”</p></div></div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Drumknott took out something neatly wrapped in a cloth napkin. “I made you a sandwich, sir.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Gingerly, Vetinari unwrapped the napkin. It contained two pieces of brown bread around thick slices of hard cheese.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He glanced out the window of the coach. There was movement on the upper floor of the Post Office, but none that indicated that the Postmaster had any intention of coming downstairs any time soon. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Drumknott looked up at him with a gaze that stopped several degrees short of pleading and ended up somewhere around formal entreaty.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He nibbled at the cheese. It was very sharp, nutty, the kind of cheese that connoisseurs called ‘assertive and complex.’ Cheese connoisseurs needed to get out more. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“This is a lot.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Drumknott realized he was referring to the flavor. “Should I have gone with something milder?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Vetinari took another bite. “Maybe not.” He considered the question. He could probably get through about half of the sandwich out of interest in the taste. If it were a mild cheese there would be more mental gymnastics to get through to be able let go, to let himself eat without thinking about it. “Drumknott?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Yes?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“What do you do when you’re feeling anxious? How do you reason with yourself in that moment?” it was presented as a question in the abstract.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Rufus considered that rarely being the center of attention was about equally a cause as a solution and not having time to triple-check work did not help at all. “I find assurance in the linearity of time. The fact that the past is, to me, immutable and any solutions must lie in the future. It is up to me to solve the problems of the present and prevent those that have yet to arise.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“And this makes you <em>less</em> anxious?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“It does.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Vetinari considered this. It made a kind of sense if the source of your fears was the uncertainty of the results of your actions. Your culpability for events outside your control. It was less helpful if your own willpower, clearsighted and understanding, allied with the soft animal of your body demanding to be fed, was locked in combat with your own willpower, cool, controlling and obsessively calculating, allied with the soft animal of your body demanding not to be allowed to make so much serotonin, please no, it hurts so much.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He wasn’t one hundred percent sure how it had happened. There had been comments, mostly from professors, those last few years at the Guild, which he mostly didn’t remember. And there had been an offhand remark from his aunt that was seared into his brain, which he knew she didn’t remember, and which he was never going to remind her of, because it was all just pieces of hay on an ungulate, wasn’t it? Death by ten hundred abrasions? </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He had been too stressed and busy to eat properly. And then he couldn’t. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Drumknott watched Lord Vetinari force himself to eat the rest of the sandwich. The Patrician dry-swallowed pills and, when he had been of less delicate constitution, ate wood-pulp paper if he decided what was written on it was too dangerous for other eyes. It was not pleasant to watch someone treat perfectly good food like that. He reached across the coach and squeezed the other man’s hand so the signet ring dug into his palm.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Vetinari eluded his own legend. There was the tyrant with a sword forged from the blood of a thousand men. There was toleration incarnate who never overreacted on petty whims. The vampire, the hierophant, the lover, the liar, l’arcane sans nom. To Drumknott the man seemed smaller than the story, his frequent glimmers of insouciance leaving you off balance and looking around. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Cosmo Lavish had it about half right, Rufus guessed. He knew where Wuffles’ grave was. Most people didn’t get that far. Cosmo was younger than Rufus, which was strange to think about. At any given point the Assassins Guild had two to three hundred full members and two to three hundred students, most of whom did not go on to become assassins. This meant it was larger than the average private school and smaller than the average Guild. It also meant it was at the upper bound of the ability of an extraordinary person (e.g. Rufus Drumknott) to keep track of who everyone was during the eight weeks he was there as part of a City Clerks Guild program. Lord Downey had been a floppy-haired professor who told him he should always feel better about a B+ than an A-. B+ meant your grader was impressed, an A- that they were disappointed. Lord Vetinari, well, he had been himself in a way he was beginning to be able to be again. Most characteristically putting down what he was reading and staring into space, stunned, because even if what you saw were the systems and the connections, in all their contradictory, counterintuitive intricacy, there were always surprises. Cosmo Lavish was not memorable. The quietest member of a loud family with just enough of an inclination to pull back the curtain that he could end up in the way of the stagehands. Drumknott had noticed him, because he noticed quiet, and had wondered vaguely who the bank was going to go to. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>That question was answered now. Drumknott couldn’t say he liked it. Vetinari’s MO was tricking the world into saving itself, but it was honest dishonesty or dishonest honesty or… at any rate it was some kind of inversion of Lipwig’s confidence tricking. Lipwig fooled honest people by relying on their trust. Vetinari used a tight corkscrew made out of the expectation of lies and fear and the understanding that the honest people are far and few between. Yet Lipwig carried through with his promises by changing the terms and Vetinari’s threats had never yet overstepped the letter of the law. Drumknott would know. He was one of three* people who had committed the entirety of the Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork to memory.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p> He understood that reality ought not to conform to the rules of his well-ordered mind. His feelings, however, did not have to conform to his employer's even-handed offering of redemption and win-win situations. When it came to using a carrot and a stick to get things to move, Drumknott tended to be more like the spring in a mousetrap. It was matter of tension and pressure, not reward or punishment.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He was necessary because he was the one on hand with the facts, incapable of being swept away by flights of fancy. Rufus thought he understood the machine, but Lord Vetinari liked throwing a spanner into his own works.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Vetinari was writing on the napkin. He handed it back to him. It had four bars of music on it. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“I beg your pardon? What is this key signature?” Drumknott could make ‘I beg your pardon’ sound like a convivial ‘what the fuck,’ which was quite a feat, since ‘I beg your pardon’ generally means something much ruder and more combative.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Patrician shrugged elegantly. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Lipwig is upstairs again,” Drumknott noted.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Oh. Good.” Vetinari smiled. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Less than ten seconds later the door of the coach was yanked open.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>*The other two were Carrot Ironfounderson and the lawyer Mr Slant, but you know this</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><p> </p>
  </div></div>
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